Saturday, January 22, 2011

Summary of Debonair book swap party

You know an event is going to be successful when guests start arriving one hour before the event is scheduled to hold.

Debonair’s first in-store event, a book-swap party, attracted over three hundred guests who had a lot of fun!

The event held at Debonair Bookstore on 294 Herbert Macaulay Way, Sabo Yaba, Lagos on Friday 21st January 2010. The evening started with an introductory speech by the General Manager of Debonair Bookstore, Mr Okunuga. He provided basic information on how the book swap will take place and took a few questions from guests at the event.

Thereafter, he invited the CEO of Debonair Bookstore, Mr Adebola Omololu for a short speech. Mr. Omololu welcomed the throngs of people at the swap party and encouraged them to network and make as many friends as possible. He also encouraged everyone to take advantage of Debonair Bookstore’s extended working hours of 9am-9pm Mondays through Saturdays as well as 12 noon to 6pm on Sundays.

In addition, he told the gathered crowd that Debonair operates both a brick and mortar store as well as Nigeria’s first fully integrated online bookstore on www.debonairbookstore.com which provides access to over 2 million book titles.

After the CEO’s speech, there was a poetry reading by Mr. Chiedu Ifeozo from his book, ‘Thoughts on a page’ which was well received.

Ms Geraldine Iheme, a participant of Big Brother Africa – The Revolution, also had a short reading from her book – Disfigured Emotions. After her reading, she signed autographs, took pictures and mixed with the crowd. She was at the event with her twin and they looked glamorous!

Dr Malcolm Fabiyi, a visiting professor at the Lagos Business School who is also running for a Senate seat in the Nigerian House of Assembly also gave a speech about knowledge and expanding one’s knowledge frontiers.

Mr Ayo Adedeji, a consummate entrepreneur and author of ‘Mind Your Business’ gave a passionate speech about why we need more entrepreneurs and the road to wealth.

Attendees also got to meet with the former Nigerian Commissioner for Insurance, Chief Dipo Bailey who attended the event as a guest of Debonair’s CEO.

After these speeches, the book-swap itself began in earnest. People swapped novels, romance titles, business titles etc and some people created a section for ebooks and swapped digital editions of various books.

The media was in full force with as many as 6 newspapers, a radio station and a TV crew from NN24 covering the event.

All in all it was a night of fun, music and finger-licking. There was only one question on the mouths of most guests; when is the next one holding?